80 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



a brick-producing state. The lola brick-yards are equipped with the 

 best of modern machinery, and manufacture building brick, dry 

 pressed brick, repress brick, in pleasing and durable shades of color. 

 They are shipped to Kansas City, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and various 

 cities of Kansas. 



Zinc Smelters. — For many years the zinc-smelting industry of 

 the southern Mississippi valley centered in the Kansas coal district 

 of Pittsburg and Girard. In 1896 a smelter was built at lola by the 

 Robt. Lanyon's Sons' Company, of Pittsburg ; a thousand retorts were 

 soon installed, and the experiment tried of using natural gas for fuel. 

 The work was so successful that the smelters were removed to the gas 

 belt, and new companies organized, so that the industry now centers 

 at lola and Cherryvale. Kansas has now become the leading zinc 

 smelter state of the Union, going from second rank to first. 



The process of treatment of the zinc ores is briefly as follows : Af- 

 ter the sulphur is removed by roasting, the fine ore is placed in clay 

 retorts, which are cylinders of fire-clay four feet long and eight inches 

 in diameter, closed at one end. These fit in openings in the walls of 

 the furnace, with the open ends flush with the walls, and are arranged 

 in rows forming a block. When coal was used for fuel, 224 retorts 

 were placed in a block, while with gas about GOO can be placed in one 

 block. When charged with ore, a condenser, a conical fire-clay ves- 

 sel, about twelve inches long and six inches in diameter at the larger 

 and two inches at the smaller end, is so placed that the larger end 

 just enters the open end of the retort. 



As the ore mixed with powdered coke is heated the zinc is driven 

 off as heavy vapor, which forms in drops on the inside of the con- 

 denser, from which the metal is tapped in long ladles about three 

 times in twenty-four hours. The molten metal is emptied into a 

 traveling kettle and poured into molds about 9x19x15 inches, making 

 a fifty-pound plate, known as "spelter." 



The zinc-works make their own retorts and condensers, out of good 

 fire-clay mixed with one-third its weight of fragments of old retorts 

 pulverized. The materials are mixed in a pug-mill with water and 

 then passed through a molding machine, and afterward dried in a 

 heated room for some weeks. They are finally fired in a small furnace 

 for twelve hours. The condensers are made in hand molds as needed. 



At the present time, at Gas City there are three smelters — Prime 

 Western, with three blocks or 2000 retorts ; Cherokee-Lanyon, with 

 three blocks ; A. B. Cockerill, with three blocks. 



At Lanyonville, the Lanyon Zinc Company has a smelter of five 

 blocks and a zinc rolling-mill. At lola is the Nicholson smelter of 

 five blocks, the Wm. Lanyon smelter with three blocks, the two smelt- 



